Pollinator in the context of "Aculeata"

Night, or nighttime, is the period of darkness when the Sun is below the horizon. Daylight illuminates one side of the Earth, leaving the other in darkness. The opposite of nighttime is daytime. Earth's rotation causes the appearance of sunrise and sunset. Moonlight, airglow, starlight, and light pollution dimly illuminate night. The duration of day, night, and twilight varies depending on the time of year and the latitude. Night on other celestial bodies is affected by their rotation and orbital periods. The planets Mercury and Venus have much longer nights than Earth. On Venus, night lasts about 58 Earth days. The Moon's rotation is tidally locked, rotating so that one of the sides of the Moon always faces Earth. Nightfall across portions of the near side of the Moon results in lunar phases visible from Earth.

Organisms respond to the changes brought by nightfall: darkness, increased humidity, and lower temperatures. Their responses include direct reactions and adjustments to circadian rhythms governed by an internal biological clock. These circadian rhythms, regulated by exposure to light and darkness, affect an organism's behavior and physiology. Animals more active at night are called nocturnal and have adaptations for low light, including different forms of night vision and the heightening of other senses. Diurnal animals are active during the day and sleep at night; mammals, birds, and some others dream while asleep. Fungi respond directly to nightfall and increase their biomass. With some exceptions, fungi do not rely on a biological clock. Plants store energy produced through photosynthesis as starch granules to consume at night. Algae engage in a similar process, and cyanobacteria transition from photosynthesis to nitrogen fixation after sunset. In arid environments like deserts, plants evolved to be more active at night, with many gathering carbon dioxide overnight for daytime photosynthesis. Night-blooming cacti rely on nocturnal pollinators such as bats and moths for reproduction. Light pollution disrupts the patterns in ecosystems and is especially harmful to night-flying insects.

Apidae is the largest family within the superfamily Apoidea, containing at least 5700 species of bees. The family includes some of the most commonly seen bees, including bumblebees and honey bees, but also includes stingless bees (also used for honey production), carpenter bees, orchid bees, cuckoo bees, and a number of other less widely known groups. Many are valuable pollinators in natural habitats and for agricultural crops.

Nectar is a viscous, sugar-rich liquid produced by plants in glands called nectaries, either within the flowers with which it attracts pollinating animals, or by extrafloral nectaries, which provide a nutrient source to animal mutualists, which in turn provide herbivore protection. Common nectar-consuming pollinators include mosquitoes, hoverflies, wasps, bees, butterflies and moths, hummingbirds, honeyeaters and bats. Nectar is an economically important substance as it is the sugar source for honey.

Nectar is also useful in agriculture and horticulture because the adult stages of some predatory insects feed on nectar. For example, a number of predacious or parasitoid wasps (e.g., the social wasp species Apoica flavissima) rely on nectar as a primary food source. In turn, these wasps then hunt agricultural pest insects as food for their young.

Mutualism describes the ecological interaction between two or more species where each species has a net benefit. Mutualism is a common type of ecological interaction. Prominent examples are:

• the nutrient exchange between vascular plants and mycorrhizal fungi,
• the fertilization of flowering plants by pollinators,
• the ways plants use fruits and edible seeds to encourage animal aid in seed dispersal, and
• the way corals become photosynthetic with the help of the microorganism zooxanthellae.

Mutualism can be contrasted with interspecific competition, in which each species experiences reduced fitness, and exploitation, and with parasitism, in which one species benefits at the expense of the other. However, mutualism may evolve from interactions that began with imbalanced benefits, such as parasitism.

The subphylum Hexapoda (from Greek for 'six legs') or hexapods comprises the largest clade of arthropods and includes most of the extant arthropod species. It includes the crown group class Insecta (true insects), as well as the much smaller clade Entognatha, which includes three classes of wingless arthropods that were once considered insects: Collembola (springtails), Protura (coneheads) and Diplura (two-pronged bristletails). The insects and springtails are very abundant and are some of the most important pollinators, basal consumers, scavengers/detritivores and micropredators in terrestrial environments.

Hexapods are named for their most distinctive feature: a three-part body plan with a consolidated thorax and three pairs of legs. Most other arthropods have more than three pairs of legs. Most recent studies have recovered Hexapoda as a subgroup of Pancrustacea.

Petals are modified leaves that form an inner whorl surrounding the reproductive parts of flowers. They are often brightly coloured or unusually shaped to attract pollinators. All of the petals of a flower are collectively known as the corolla. Petals are usually surrounded by an outer whorl of modified leaves called sepals, that collectively form the calyx and lie just beneath the corolla. The calyx and the corolla together make up the perianth, the non-reproductive portion of a flower. When the petals and sepals of a flower are difficult to distinguish, they are collectively called tepals. Examples of plants in which the term tepal is appropriate include genera such as Aloe and Tulipa. Conversely, genera such as Rosa and Phaseolus have well-distinguished sepals and petals. When the undifferentiated tepals resemble petals, they are referred to as "petaloid", as in petaloid monocots, orders of monocots with brightly coloured tepals. Since they include Liliales, an alternative name is lilioid monocots.

Although petals are usually the most conspicuous parts of animal-pollinated flowers, wind-pollinated species, such as the grasses, either have very small petals or lack them entirely (apetalous).

Thrips (singular: thrips; order Thysanoptera) are minute (mostly 1 mm (0.04 in) long or less), slender insects with fringed wings and unique asymmetrical mouthparts. Entomologists have described approximately 7,700 species. They fly only weakly and their feathery wings are unsuitable for conventional flight; instead, thrips exploit an unusual mechanism, clap and fling, to create lift using an unsteady circulation pattern with transient vortices near the wings.

Thrips are a functionally diverse group; many of the known species are fungivorous. A small proportion of the species are serious pests of commercially important crops. Some of these serve as vectors for over 20 viruses that cause plant disease, especially the Tospoviruses. Many flower-dwelling species bring benefits as pollinators, with some predatory thrips feeding on small insects or mites. In the right conditions, such as in greenhouses, invasive species can exponentially increase in population size and form large swarms because of a lack of natural predators coupled with their ability to reproduce asexually, making them destructive to crops. Their identification to species by standard morphological characteristics is often challenging.

Cycads /ˈsaɪkædz/—constituting the division Cycadophyta—are seed plants with a stout, woody cylindrical trunk with a crown of large, hard, stiff, evergreen and usually pinnate (feather-shaped) leaves. The species are dioecious, that is, individual plants of a species are either male or female. Cycads vary in size from having trunks only a few centimeters to several meters tall. They typically grow slowly and have long lifespans. They superficially resemble palms or ferns, but are not closely related to either group. Cycads are gymnosperms. Cycads have specialized pollinators, usually a specific beetle, and more rarely a thrips or a moth.

Both male and female cycads bear cones (strobili) containing their seeds, somewhat resembling conifer cones. Cycads fix nitrogen in association with cyanobacteria living in the plants' roots. Some species are used as narcotics, while in Vanuatu the plant symbolizes peace and appears on the national flag. Cycads all over the world are in decline, with four species on the brink of extinction and seven species each with fewer than 100 plants left in the wild.

Hoverflies, also called flower flies or syrphids, make up the insect family Syrphidae. As their common name suggests, they are often seen hovering or nectaring at flowers; the adults of many species feed mainly on nectar and pollen, while the larvae (maggots) eat a wide range of foods. In some species, the larvae are saprotrophs, specifically detritivores, eating decaying plant and animal matter in the soil or in ponds and streams. In other species, the larvae are insectivores, preying on aphids, thrips, and other plant-sucking insects.

Insects such as aphids are considered crop pests, so the aphid-eating larvae of some hoverflies are economically and ecologically important. The larvae are potential agents for use in biological control, while the adults are pollinators.